Men's lacrosse remains unable to crack the SUNYAC

by Panagiotis Argitis - Editor-in-Chief

Tue, Apr 23rd 2019 03:00 pm

Senior midfielder Billy Coppola hits the brakes while being pursued and approached by Oneonta opponents. As one of the team's more experienced players, Coppola has been a major contributor for the Brockport offense and defense.

The cage remained empty while hopes for a season-turnaround quickly faded away. With only two games left in the 2019 campaign, The College at Brockport men’s lacrosse team currently stands with zero wins in the conference after dropping its fourth consecutive SUNYAC contest to Cortland. Now, Brockport’s postseason dreams have disappeared from sight.

From the beginning stages of the season, Brockport struggled to attain a winning chemistry as the squad mainly comprised of younger talent bounced between victories and defeats. However, as the schedule unfolded into the conference matchups, the team’s form descended to a permanent low.

When introduced to this season’s conference opposition, the team saw a missing link within its offensive display; a theme that has trickled down through the entirety of Brockport’s conference play. While the team values its great success in transitional movements from defense to offense, its superiority in ground ball and faceoff situations, the ball is simply not finding the back of the net. By the numbers in the SUNYAC schedule thus far, Brockport owns the third-best shot on goal percentage (SOG) with 55.8 percent, behind Oneonta and Cortland. In contrasting fashion to holding a high success rate in getting the ball on target, the team is second to last in goals per game (GPG) with 6.25.

Brockport’s head coach, Ben Wineburg, remains puzzled to why the offense has failed to score despite the volume of shots.

“I don’t know why [finishing has been such a struggle],” Wineburg wrote. “The losses are tough, however, the team’s work ethic has been steady.”

The team’s deficiency in front of the cage was once again a part of its fall to its most recent contest against Cortland, only this time it decided Brockport’s elimination from playoff contention. The match was played on Saturday, April 20, and opened with a first period shutout from Brockport’s opposition. While the second period saw Brockport place a mark on the board, Cortland failed to slow its pace and continued to flex its offensive prowess, managing to squeeze six past Brockport freshman goalie John Felice to head into halftime with a lead of 8-1.

It was more of the same following the break as Cortland outshined Brockport by netting five goals to Brockport’s one. At the end of the third quarter, Brockport’s chances of coming in distance with Cortland completely dropped as the team was down 13-2. In the closing period, Brockport found the back of the net five times, but it was to no avail as Cortland ran away with the victory long before the final horn sounded. The game finished 15-7 in Cortland’s favor and removed Brockport from the postseason picture.

With their defeat against the Red Dragons, the Golden Eagles’ SUNYAC tournament aspirations came to a low-grade end. A glance past the season’s results introduces the rebuilding stages for the future and while the poor performances are not a factor to overlook, Brockport’s 2019 campaign can prove valuable in the next steps of the program’s push for conference success.

“These losses can only act as learning experiences for future SUNYAC games and seasons ahead,” senior attacker Nick Daigle wrote. “The team continues to remain positive regardless of how our games have turned out thus far in conference play.”

Moving forward, the team will look to bolster a complete arsenal of a team and translate the experience gathered in this season’s play into future ambitions. While results contribute to single-season progress, the overall process holds more significance.

Brockport awaits to play its concluding contests at Geneseo on Wednesday, April 24, at 4 p.m. and at home against Plattsburgh on Saturday, April 27, at 1 p.m. The team will look to salvage two wins and finish the season on a high note.